Reimagining digital play: we want more sociability, hybridity and safety, with fewer tricky freemiums

In our digital play consultation we are hearing from children and young people how they are finding ways to enjoy online the qualities of play that matter to them. They told us about everything from the classic notion of digital play – video games – to playing hide and seek and Scattergories via Zoom

Realising a better digital environment for children: Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) as a tool

More and more children actively engage with the digital environment and from a very young age. This encompasses anything from video-on-demand services and social media platforms to talking or joking with smart speakers

What if… children's rights were anticipated at the very start of digital innovation?

Children and young people are increasingly claiming the digital space as their own even though digital infrastructures are rarely conceived with their evolving capacities, rights and requirements in mind. To bridge this gap, we examined the potential of Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) as a tool for realising child rights in the digital environment

Net neutrality policymaking: A comparative study of the UK and the USA

Net neutrality is a hotly debated and contested policy for broadband Internet access provision. In principle, net neutrality prescribes no discrimination by the type or size of data packet exchanged over the Internet. This principle has fostered innovation and economic growth. The non-discriminatory principle ingrained in Internet architecture has also made it the ultimate platform for convergence of technology, business and service. However, the content, businesses and services that the Internet supports, particularly rich content such as online audio-visual services, are pushing the existing Internet network infrastructure to its limits. The imbalance of growing demands for bandwidth and relatively static supply of network capacity has sparked a policy debate over network management principles for Internet access provision. The interdependent yet competing interests of network and content providers and all levels of convergence taking place on the Internet make net neutrality policymaking extremely challenging. To explain emerging net neutrality policies in the US and UK, this research examines the net neutrality policymaking process based on the understanding that the process is both structured and actor-driven. Treating policymaking as a communicative process, it identifies as the research data the formal communication and policy actors’ accounts of their informal communication during the policymaking process. An analytical framework that emphasises the interaction between structural factors and policy actors is then applied to both sets of data. This research argues in support of the position that net neutrality policies, like other polices, are communicative, structured and actor-driven. The challenges in developing net neutrality policy and policy measures result from the convergence of transmission infrastructure and content, and the interdependent yet competing values and interests underpinning the provision and consumption of these services

Review of the year 2022: Digital Futures Commission’s milestones towards a child rights-respecting digital world

The year 2022 has been an eventful year for the DFC! As the year is coming to an end, we reflect on our outputs and look forward to further translating our findings into policy and design recommendations and actions to realise children’s rights in relation to the digital environment

Possibilities for a future Pokémon Go

Back in 2016, the number of daily active users of Pokémon Go rocketed close to 45 million users within the first 2 weeks of its launch. The game has since been reported for both the joy and the horror it brings. But what exactly makes the game so appealing to so many people across the generations? Does the future Pokémon Go need augmented reality

Child Rights by Design: our guidance for innovators toolkit is finally here!

Child Rights by Design is a principled vision to inspire innovators to help realise children’s rights when designing digital products and services. It is grounded in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the most widely ratified international human rights treaty ever, applicable to all children from birth to 18 years old, and holistic, balanced, authoritative. Its implementation in relation to the digital environment is set out in the Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 25

Children’s rights through children’s eyes: a methodology for consulting children

This report details how we consulted children in the summer of 2022 to gain children’s perspectives on how digital affordances enhance or undermine their rights and identify what needs to change to make the digital environment respectful of children’s rights by design

What do children think of EdTech or know of its data sharing? Read our survey findings

What do UK children think of the EdTech products they use at school? Have they been informed about the personal data these products collect from them? The answer to the first question is mixed, at best. The answer to the second question is, by and large, no! Yet, our recent report uncovered how digital classrooms are failing to comply with data protection regulations and leaving school children vulnerable to commercial exploitation as a consequence

It's time to make the digital world playful by design!

Like everything else in their life, children’s play has shifted online almost by default due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Parents, teachers and professionals who work with children, on the other hand, have scrambled to advise children on play with digital technologies; resources have been hard to come by, making it hard to figure out what free play in digital contexts looks like! So, what are the important qualities of free play and how can these qualities be designed into digital contexts